Travel Agents Share 10 Tips

September 5, 2018

Tips for Travel Agents

With the summer officially nearing an end, TravelPulse gets agents prepared for fall vacations and bookings by sharing 10 secret. Furthermore, these fellow travel experts share tips on how to make the most money out of this unpredictable, but potentially lucrative travel season.

We chatted with roughly 10 travel specialists about everything from the trendy destinations to pitch this fall to the niche markets to target …and the mistakes fellow consultants should avoid when the leaves start to fall.

Here’s what we found.

Pitch These Trendy Fall Hot Spots

Based on our chats with travel experts, here are the trendiest destinations for the fall travel season.

This includes destinations people are vacationing to in the fall, as well as destinations clients are booking trips to in the fall but for travel at a later date.

Destination weddings, especially in the Caribbean and Mexico, can be booked with a lot of added value in the fall since this is the season when hoteliers at romance-oriented properties are the most flexible in regards to negotiating room rates simply because they need to fill the rooms.

Also parents don’t necessarily want to travel alone. They just want to leave the kids behind.

Seek Out Value-Seekers

Again, because of the flexibility in room rates by hoteliers desperate to fill rooms, the fall is the time of the year to take advantage of bargain-hunting clients.

This is perhaps the most value-hungry traveling public the industry has ever seen.

Additionally, it’s been that way since 2009 when the recession forced most hotels and destinations to include a lot more value to go along with room rates and the overall cost of a getaway, whether that included anything from free rounds of golf to spa or air credit.

This was the smartest approach.

Some hotels that were desperate enough to slash rates never recovered. But the ones that included extra value without significantly cutting rates were the ones to come out of the recession stronger than ever.

Pitch Last-Minute Travel to Millennials Without Children

The client to pitch last-minute vacations to usually doesn’t have children.

While parents looking to vacation without the kids still have to plan for a babysitter, a client without kids can leave whenever he or she decides.

“I actually like to try and target Millennials for fall travel,” said Emily Bertsch, an advisor with VIP Vacations, Inc. in
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. “I’ve seen and heard from so many people that they don’t want to use their vacation time because of the fear of falling too far behind in their work.

“So, I like to go through my database, find the Millennials that can easily pick up and go — they typically are young and spontaneous and don’t have children to coordinate babysitters with — and remind them not to let those vacation days go unused,” Bertsch continued. “I remind them that a break from work and time to unwind helps them recharge and come back even more ready to take on their work.”

Sell Celebration Travel

Since milestone moments worth traveling for can occur in someone’s life from January to December, celebration travel really doesn’t have a peak or low season.

Also, the fall is no different.

Likewise, we mentioned advisors should be promoting destination weddings in the Caribbean and Mexico for clients looking to tie the knot in the fall at a value-packed, all-inclusive hotel.

After all, there is never a time in the year when there are zero family reunions, birthdays, vow renewals and wedding anniversaries.

To put it simply, if you are not selling celebration travel from the first day of the year until New Year’s Eve, you simply do not have a large enough client base.

Family travel is always at its highest during the summer because children are not just off of school. They are also off of school for an extended period of time, giving mom and dad a larger booking window to work with when planning a vacation.

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